With over 2,350 products worth a total of over £85,000, IWOOT.com’s Christmas Competition is a monster of a prize!

IWantOneOfThose.com, the most awesome shopping destination for gifts, gadgets and gizmos is launching the competition of a lifetime this Christmas. The good guys over at IWantOneOfThose.com are hosting really, the biggest online competition I’ve ever seen before! You could win one of EVERYTHING they stock on their online store!

This really is a crazy competition, multiple iPads – electronic drum kits, bikes, gadgets – this even beats the famous Gadget Show Competition!

So head over to  the competition page to enter this once in a lifetime competition! Its easy to enter, just a £1 text and you’re in! Must admit I’ve texted in a few times!!

Good Luck Guys, and thanks to IWantOneOfThose.com for an awesome competition!

]]> http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/win-one-of-everything-on-iwantoneofthose-com/feed/ 0 http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/roccat-isku-gaming-keyboard-review/ http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/roccat-isku-gaming-keyboard-review/#comments Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:06:41 +0000 Sam Deans http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/?p=406  

This guys, is one kick ass keyboard. It has it all, the features, the looks, the performance. We love the Roccat Isku Keyboard. Thats why it got the GAMING REVIEWS LIVE STAMP OF AWESOMENESS!

• Features of the Roccat Isku keyboard include:
• Roccat Talk, where your keyboard and mouse can communicate to do in-game on the fly keyboard commands
• Roccat Easyshift, where your mouse and keyboard buttons can be duplicated to have double the available buttons to press
• Blue illumination
• 3 thumb keys below the space bar – these can be fully programmable.
• Full audio feedback and voice playback
• Media keys
• Line of macro buttons on the left side
• 3 Profile Keys
• In game on the fly quick macro record button
• Dedicated illumination button
• Full support for Roccat’s award winning driver software

So here we have one of the better mice surfaces on the market. This aluminum, double sided mousemat will suite gamers wanting the edge of speed when their gaming. The two sides let you pick between speed and control, but both sides are very glidey!

Comes with a wrist rest (Otherwise known as a Flop Slap) and is a recommended mouse surface!

The wireless is top quality, and with the Exact Sound presets on the headset, it will suite all your needs, weather that be for gaming, movies or music.

While the game does have it’s moments, it just doesn’t live up to a true Duke Nukem game.

Let’s start with the story:

Duke Nukem Forever has a good story, but also not that great of one at the same time, you start off with Duke taking a leak in the bathroom, then your off to find guns and fight a big one eyed freak of a boss. After the boss you think the game has ended, but it has only begun, You are then greeted in Dukes hotel room in Las Vegas with two chicks known as the Holsum twins giving Duke a “hand”, When one of the Holsum twins asks how the game was, Duke went off saying “Well after 12 f**king years, it better be”. The question we all should be asking, was 12 years enough, or to much? It seems the game isn’t drawn out enough, the story is confusing and made me scratch my head. But I’ll go ahead and try to explain it as best as possible. Aliens land on earth, aliens take all our woman, Duke is then ordered to fight, END…

I didn’t really pay that much attention to the story, all I wanted to do was shoot pigcops in the face for taking our woman! I also wanted to use a bunch of cool weapons to kill said enemies. You do get a good arsenal of weaponry in the game, ranging from Dukes classic pistol, RPG’s, shotguns, machine guns, shrink rays, wall mines, remote pipe bombs, a rail gun *AKA the sniper* and a few alien weapons. The weapons are cool to use, and it never gets old shrinking enemies and stomping their sorry @$$, but that said, the weapons are pretty bland and can get old kind of fast, plus you can only hold two at a time. WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?

The shooting is alright, when you find the right areas, for an FPS there isn’t much to shoot it feels like, the game feels more concentrated on the puzzles then shooting, which is fun, but we sometimes want more to do, but then again, it’s nice to have a break once and awhile. The puzzles are some what challenging, most of them consist of you finding a lever/button or a platform to jump from, I had fun with most of the puzzles, but doing that for most of the game can get old and to drawn out.

On to the levels:

Duke Nukem Forevers level design is good, I liked a lot of the maps, they very from a hotel, the streets of Las Vegas, the desert of Las Vegas, the famous Duke Burger, and the even more famous Hoover Dam. I will say the lighting could have used an improvement though, a lot of the levels are are dark and bland and hard to see. This is where you use Duke Vision *nightvision* Duke Vision doesn’t help most of the time though, sure you can see, but the shiny textures, and some lighting within the levels can reflect and give you a not so nice blinding white screen. If the developers could have tweaked the lighting this wouldn’t have been a problem so much. Along with those issues is the some what frustrating boss battles, I found myself dying at least 3-4 times on some of the later boss battles due to lack of cover, and the bosses can get cheap by spawning way to many enemies along side of them.

The Octaking was probably the 2nd most frustrating boss in Duke Nukem Forver, lack of cover, and spawning 3 of his minions to fend you off isn’t pleasant. The hardest boss would be the Energy Leech, not only do you have to dodge his under water ground pound attack, you also have to be worrisome about your breath, take to much damage and run out of breath isn’t a great combo. The under water levels were not the most fun levels in the game, if they could have made Duke breath a little bit longer, things would be different, but having to breath under water and also fight off enemies isn’t fun with your being ganked by 8 of them.

Graphics:
I like the graphics, sure their aged, but don’t look terrible. Remember this game was supposed to be released years ago.

Sound:
The sound design is alright, but could have been a lot better, guns sound weak, and voice acting could use some remastering. But it’s alright for a game of age.

Multiplayer:
Sad to say this, but if your looking for this game for some fun multiplayer, your going to need to look elsewhere. The multiplayer is fun, good luck finding a server though, on the PC I only found 4 servers in total, real sad because I loved Duke3D’s multiplayer, but again, if your looking at this game for multiplayer look at Half-Life 2 Deathmatch, or Quake Live. Along side the multiplayer though is a leveling system, similar to Call of Duty’s, you rank up, you unlock stuff, there’s also challenges to complete, good luck trying to finish them all though. When you do unlock items, they become available in your “Digs” also known as your house, you can view statues and paintings, I haven’t really been able to mess around with it that much, but I’ll update the review if I can get ranked up.

Final Verdict:
While I haven’t been waiting for this game for 12 years, I have been waiting since about 2004-2005, but all I got to say is this; Duke Nukem Forever is a good game, but might not be what we were expecting, the story is boring, the fighting is fun filling, Duke’s humor is funny, multiplayer is dead with no hope *sadly* and at $50-$60, it just isn’t worth the price, wait till this game hits the bargen bin because this game just ate $h!t and died.

The Good: Fun bosses, good aray of weapons, decent graphics, Duke humor is funny as always, decent levels.

The Bad: Boring story, lack of stuff to do, dead multiplayer, sound needs improving, laggy multiplayer servers, lighting needs updating, Duke needs to learn to hold his breath longer.

7.0 ::Decent::

Featuring 6 different variations of adventure games, including rally ball, a dodge ball styled game where you bounce a ball back and forth to hit wooden boxes and also hit different targets to get more balls to hit and make your wooden box bashing faster, is a fun game, keep’s you’re heart pumping and your senses tingling.

River rush, a game where you’re floating down a river in a raft and collecting coins, jumping over rocks, cliffs, and even a pirate ship. This game really tests your skills and reaction time; you have to know when to move right or left, and when to time your jumps to collect as many coins as possible.

Reflex ridge will test your reaction time/reflexes, but in a more challenging way then river rush. You now have obstacles in your way that you must duck under, dodge from left and right and even jump over. You can gain yourself a speed boost by jumping over and over again, but watch out you might find yourself hitting all kinds of obstacles. This game will also test how fast you can beat it, there is a timer that you wont see till the end but make it fast enough and you will gain extra coins for an even higher score.

20,000 leaks is my personal favorite, setting you under water with all kinds of sea life, from normal fishes, puffer fish, and even a hammer shark. The basics of this game is reaction and reflexes like most of the Kinect Adventure games, these fish are out to drown you, and you must block the cracks they make in your under water tank so you wont drown to death. Some of the poses this game makes you do are really fun and hysterical when the Kinect cam takes a nice little snap shot of you.

Space Pop is a little weird at first, setting you in space where you can fly like a little butterfly to try and pop bubbles, since this game is set in space of course the gravity is turned off making it a little more challenging to get the gold medal. The premise of the game is simple, flap your arms and pop bubbles, lay your hands to the side to fall, and move left and right to pop more bubbles. Simple enough but it can be a little tedious when having to move frontward and backward to pop some of these bubbles.

Along side all these awesome adventure games is the snap shot feature that is included in all Kinect games. In some portions of the game where there’s a lot of action (Don’t hold that above my head if I’m wrong) the game will take snap shots of you playing to capture the funny poses you get stuck in. It’s a funny and great way to have fun by embarrassing your friends or family. If that wasn’t bad enough you can even post them on your facebook, if you don’t want to be embarrassed you can always disable it in the options menu.

Last on the list is the adventure mode, where you play all these mini games and unlock living statues, some of these range from a gerbil and a shark, these living statues you earn are fun and enjoyable. You use your body to move them around and can even record your voice so they say a funny message. You can even upload these to the Kinect sharing website to let everyone in the world hear what you have to say.

The adventure mode is fun, you start off by playing on the basic difficulty, after you’re done with basic you move on to intermediate and so forth. Beat each difficulty and really challenge yourself on the expert difficulties.

Online mode is a great way to play with your friends if you can’t invite any over for some local multiplayer fun. Sadly I haven’t been able to test this out yet, but when I do I will update the review.

I will add that it is recommended to have a big enough space to play these games when having more then one person playing.

To sum it all up, Kinect Adventures is a great starter game for your Kinect collection, it offers a bunch to do, but also does lack in more content forcing you to buy more Kinect games. All and all this is a great game that your friends and family will enjoy.

Kinect Adventures Scores: 8

The Good: Fun adventure mode, good verity of games, online mode is a great addition to keep the replay value up, snap shot feature is funny, embarrassing your friends is mean but fun (hehe) almost all the mini games are awesome, living statues are hilarious and sharing the glory is even better.

The Bad: Space pop isn’t too fun, make sure you have room to play with more then one person, lacks content forcing you to pay for more games.

Today I have received my Kinect and I’ve got to say, it is one of the best motion controllers I have ever played with. Aside from the Wii which I believe lives in it’s own world apart from the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 it’s the best. I love that it’s controllerless, everyone can play it without having to worry about not having enough controllers which is a huge plus, now your not spending countless dollars on extra controllers. The hardware itself is great, it’s a small and sleek with two vents on the side, three cameras on the front, and coated with a shiny black finish (Warning: it is a finger print magnet).

In the package you will find the Kinect , one game called Kinect Adventures, an external power pack for older Xbox 360′s, extended USB cable, and manuals. You will find that the Kinect has a very impressive response time, I haven’t seen any lag or delay when playing Kinect Adventures like some reviewers have pointed out. You will find that sometimes when in a small area that the Kinect does has some issues responding and noticing your movements when it thinks your too close but that isn’t much of a problem as long as you have 6 feet of space to move around.

I would recommend having more then 6 feet of space though. The Kinects calibration system isn’t too bad, It can be a little finicky when trying to calibrate for Kinect Adventures, when the slightest bit a movement can screw up the calibration process. The minor calibration issues didn’t ruin my experience one bit, after your finished you don’t have to go through it again, unless you find it’s either lagging or delaying your movements.

Kinect can also be used as a remote for your 360, by waving your hand, you then get transferred to the Kinect menu where you can either move to the application your wanting or use a voice command to open it for you. If you always lose the remote don’t worry, the Kinect can be used as a voice remote to start, stop, pause, rewind, and fast forward movies, as well the ESPN application. Kinect can also be used for video chatting via Xbox Live and Windows Live messenger, You’ll never lose contact with any of your friends this way.

The overall experience you get with Kinect is phenomenal, after awhile it can get a little exhausting but well worth it, and well worth the $150 your spending on it (Even though it is a little much) With the current line up of games it might not make you run out and buy it real fast, but we will have to wait and see what other developers design for us. The bottom line is, get Kinect. You’ll have lots of fun with your friends and family, and it is worth every penny.

Kinect Scores: 8.5/10

The Good: Impressive motion capture, small and sleek, works with old Xbox 360′s, being able to use it as a voice controlled remote is cool, video chatting with both Xbox Live and Windows Live users is a big plus, great fun for your friends and family.

The Bad: Tedious and sometimes frustrating calibration setup, $150 is a little much, It says at least 6 feet but I think you could use a little more.

One of the meetings we had arranged at Multiplay’s i40 LAN Party was with BigFoot Network’s™ Timo Kusian. Timo was great to talk to, and I found it really interesting learning about what the Killer™ gaming network cards actually did! We got to take away a Killer™ 2100 that day, and since then I’ve been testing it out to see if it can improve my online experience!

Firstly, the card its self. It uses PCI Express x1, so it won’t take up a valuable PCI slot in your computer. You can keep those for your quad SLI setups! The card is housed in a sleek metal black case, with a honeycomb top to it. Also, it features a lovely red LED light which shines through the card to create a nice red pattern in your case – nice little touch there! Hardware wise, this little baby is rocking a Gigabit Ethernet port, 400 Mhz Processor, 128mb of RAM and runs its own kernel of Linux in the background, which manages its own network stack. Impressive or what!

So with all this hardware, you may be asking “how does this help my internet”. Well, Windows, being Windows, slows your internet down. It runs the internet through its own confusing network stack, giving internet to applications that don’t really need it – and your game suffers having to wait for the internet to reach it! With the Killer™ 2100, it replaces the Windows network stack meaning it can route your connection straight through to the game! This also offloads stress from your CPU! The results of this? Better ping and lower latency = Your bullet gets on the wire FIRST!

But really, for Bigfoot Networks™ making your ping better was pretty easy. They wanted to make the Killer™ 2100 even more useful for gamers. Included in the package, is what they call Game Networking DNA™. This put into non marketing terms, is the name they give to their bundled driver software, included in the box. Now usually, I find driver software a bit clunky – and usually unnecessary. In this case however, its invaluable! Here’s a run thorough of the main features of the Game Networking DNA™ software.

]]> http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/bigfoot-networks-killer-2100-gaming-npu/feed/ 0 http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/eurogamer-expo-press/ http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/eurogamer-expo-press/#comments Sat, 02 Oct 2010 21:04:43 +0000 Sam Deans http://www.gamingreviewslive.com/?p=271

EuroGamer Expo 2010

Ok, So EuroGamer Expo 2010. This is the Uk’s biggest games show – giving gamers the chance to play unreleased games in the run up for the Christmas rush of game sales.

This article is not a write up of what was being shown at EuroGamer Expo, its a rant about why I thought it sucked if you were press trying to cover events. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not at the stage yet where I find covering events boring like its something I “have” to do. I go to them to have a good time, meet up with good friends, and bring back some good coverage for Gaming Reviews Live. But as a member of  the press, I’m reporting on the event, and the companies/products on show there, and get them good exposure. You would have thought that as press passes were being issued for EuroGamer Expo, that they might have actually cared about how the event was being received by the press? Not at all. Here’s why:

1) Upon arrival, press check in was great. Straight in. Thank you.

2) First thing we wanted to cover was the Developer Session for Fable 3. This was an opportunity to get an exclusive look at this massive game, from none other than the games creator, Peter Molyneux. So, thinking there would at least be some seats set aside for the press, we walked up to the conference room door, only to be stopped by security, and told to join the back of the queue. So not only was there no press seats, we were made to join the queue! This wouldn’t have been a total disaster, except that before we reached the door, they cut the queue 30 people in front of us, and said the theater was full! So we didn’t even get in to see pretty much the biggest event of the day!

3) Also, I found out on the day that there were 2 levels of press. Press, and VIP press. Personally I find this pretty insulting that I paid £40 for the train down to EuroGamer Expo to give their event coverage – and yet all media are not treated the same?! VIP press were treated to tech demo’s by the game devs, press rooms, and access all areas. Normal press (e.g. me) were treated to…um…entry to the event? If their going to allow press in, we NEED access to a press room, and we are all professionals in the industry. Don’t separate us out into “baby press”, and the real thing. We should all have had VIP press wristbands.

4) There were probably 5 game developers in total out on the show floor available to talk about their games? This is terrible for anyone looking for interviews – as there was quite simply no one who actually knew about the games anywhere! All credit goes to the Senior Developer of F1 from codemasters, he was there next to his game for hours setting people up and making sure they knew what to do on the game. Really nice guy!

5) The games themselves were great, but the amount playable on them was pretty poor – most would be set on a random level, and unless you knew about the game prior to coming to EuroGamer Expo, for 90% of the time you would have no fucking clue what the hell your supposed to be doing on the game? Theres no info about controls, or how to play. Yes it doesn’t take a genius to work out how to play a game, but games have advanced controls that aren’t always obvious without playing a game from the start – so just having the game play a random level really doesn’t give you any idea about the games quality/gameplay.

I won’t be releasing that much coverage of EuroGamer Expo 2010, as really I just didn’t bother capturing crap! I know I’m more of a hardware guy, but still – thought I may have been able to cover something new and exciting? Nope – all just game demos we’ve seen before.

Oh well, see you at The Gadget Show Live, Multiplay i41, Dabs live!

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